Date of Completion

2020

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Economics

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Bill Gibson

Second Advisor

Richard Paulsen

Third Advisor

Kai Lin

Keywords

Hakes, Sauer, Moneyball, baseball, Audette, replication

Abstract

This paper replicates and cross-validates the econometric models presented by Hakes and Sauer in “An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis.” The authors suggest an inefficiency in the major league baseball player market leading up to the publishing of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball. Through the usage of basic econometric methods, Hakes and Sauer (2006) determined that while on-base and slugging percentage were improperly valued prior to the book’s release in 2003, the inefficiency was corrected soon after. This study is successful in replicating the results produced by Hakes and Sauer, as well as cross-validating their findings with an agent-based model. However, after extending their work with new and current data, the external validity of their model is brought into question. Although major league baseball teams properly valued on-base and slugging percentage following the release of Moneyball, this correction no longer holds when examining data beyond the 2004 season.

Comments

The full contents of this thesis are available only in the Honors College office.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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